Byram, Glenville
These two sections of town get absolutely no respect in the real estate community. I once lost a sale off Weaver Street when the buyers, Manhattanites, were told by their friends in the city that the area was no good. New Yorkers know the Greenwich real estate market? Give me a break. But that’s the reality of the current market – I think people are missing out on some great values on the western edge of town. The Rockefellers are busy selling off and developing their property, with houses going in the mid-5s, and neighborhoods like Balliwick, with its own community country club, are perking along quite nicely. I love Riverside and Old Greenwich, having grown up there, but, dollar-for-dollar, there’s a lot more room for profit if one’s willing to move west.

Wait til’ January?
Is it worthwhile to list a house in the last few weeks of December? I’m not sure, although I just did so (a very nice house on Cherry Valley Road, if you’re interested). I’m inclined to think that folks are too busy with holiday preparations to bother with house hunting and certainly the sellers don’t need their lives disrupted at this time of year, but, on the other hand, when is there less competition? Come January, a ton of new listings will come on the market, as well as many that were yanked for December, so now’s the time to have your house stand out. Will it work? I’ll let you know, but I already have a couple of showings scheduled so maybe …


113 Cat Rock
Pam Chiapetta (Coldwell Banker) has just listed this new construction for $3,795,000. I think that’s a good price. A “Victorian Farmhouse”, according to Pam, and who am I to disagree? I doubt that farmhouses were built out to 8,000 sq. ft. 100 years ago, but a rich farmer would no doubt have loved all this space. A really nice house and a surprisingly nice yard – when I saw the property a few years ago, I doubted that a builder could construct anything this nice while accommodating the pond and wetlands it contained but he’s done it, with room left over for a pool.Cat Rock’s a funny location: love it for its bucolic privacy, hate it for its winding inconvenience, it’s up to you. I happen to love it. Nice place, good price.

Tom Ward
My recent mention of those fabulous Kaye brothers, Joel and Jeremy, as two of the best real estate attorneys in town brought forth the modest admission from Joel that they have officially adopted Tom Ward, of Ivey, Barnum and O’Mara into the family and that he should therefore also be included in that category. Glad to acknowledge this and my apologies to Tom - missed the bris, fella, so who knew?

Brokers / Agents
I try to mention by name the many excellent agents in town but often neglect to mention the firms that employ them. That’s not due (I hope) to some anti-competitive streak but rather recognition that good agents do their work where they are comfortable and their place of employment is more or less irrelevant. Ann Simpson, for instance, works for Prudential, which is a fine company, but Ann would, I suspect, provide the same excellent service if she worked for anyone else. Ditto for Diddle Mcalister, of Round Hill Partners. Again, a great group of professionals, but you could, I think, take any of its agents (and its principals, Renee Gallagher and Joann Erb), stick them with the task of selling your house and they’d perform superbly, regardless of where there desks were parked. Are there bad, incompetent agents out there? You bet, and I hope you won’t see them mentioned here. But the good ones are scattered throughout our industry and you’ll do well with any of them: something to remember when you’re presented with a fat portfolio of glossy pictures and amazing statistics regarding one particular firm or another. My advice is to find an agent you like and trust and ignore the corporate trappings (please don’t send this column to my boss).

Stop the presses!
I’ve always wanted to send that message and finally had a chance to do so last week when, after reading on our MLS daily hot sheet of an astonishing sale for $7,400,000 on Thunder Mountain Road (off Riversville), I wrote all about it in a first draft of this column; I learned the next day that it was all a crock. In a message on the MLS Bulletin (something I and most agents rarely read) the selling agency, Greenwich Fine Properties, slipped in a note that the “property sold in unfinished condition. Builder estimates that budget for finished project would have created a finished value of $7,400,000”. Not reported was the actual sales price: $4,600,000. Well: I just sold two properties in Riverside for $3,800,000 apiece. If my builder had installed gold-plated fixtures and swimming pools, he might have sold them for $6,000,000. Should I adjust my sales reports accordingly? The point here is that Realtors rely on the honesty of their peers when reporting sold prices. We use that data to advise our clients on what to pay for a house and where to price it, if they’re selling. When a broker pollutes the well by inserting phony numbers, everyone loses. I fault my own real estate board for accepting and reporting this ridiculous subterfuge as much as I do the offending agency but neither comes out looking especially good. I understand the problem here: the builder has three new houses he’d like to sell and doesn’t want to depreciate the value of the remaining two by showing a sale millions less than his asking price for the houses next door, especially when the sale is for an unfinished house. But we live on real data in this business, not fantasized dreams. It took only one jerk of a lawyer (from Stamford, if you care) to stop payment on his attorney’s Trustee check to switch the entire real estate industry to a certified check-only basis. I fear that this duplicitous maneuver by this particular broker will have the same effect of eliminating the trust we otherwise place in each other. That shouldn’t happen.

No good deed goes unpunished
I recently wrote about Ed Mortimer’s waterfront property on Binney Lane in Old Greenwich, asking $17,000,000, in what I thought were positive terms. Back comes a complaint from Ed that I said the house would have to be torn down and rebuilt to Coastal Area Management codes if substantial improvements were sought. Ed says it ain’t so. I say, okay, but be sure to have your lawyer and surveyor examine the situation before you commit to the place. It’s still a grand piece of property and, frankly, if you have the money to buy the land, you’ll want to tear the place down anyway, in my opinion.

Jean Ruggiero
I’ve just finished up a deal with this lady and was reminded once again what I like about her. I told my clients when we began bidding that Jean is a fierce, tough negotiator but, if we got her on our side, she’d protect the deal like a tigress. That proved to be the case. Jean’s one of the top-selling agents in the country and usually dominates the Greenwich market (Tamar, David, don’t email me please) and for good reason: when you strike a deal with her, you know it’s going to happen. That’s the same reason, by the way, I recommend those Kaye boys, Joel and Jeremy, for real estate lawyering. I value folks who protect their client’s interest while remembering that their ego is of no importance compared to the deal itself.

Global Warming
I heard a BBC interview with some UN scientist who claims to have established a model for living within the confines of the earth’s resources (he himself acknowledged that he was living at 5 times that capacity, but never mind). Using some preposterously accurate measurements, he proclaimed that the perfect country we should emulate was Cuba, followed by “many other Caribbean nations”. Haven’t been to Cuba recently, and don’t want to, but I’ve witnessed Caribbean poverty and I’m not impressed. Dirt floors and spoiled bananas are our future? I hope not - at least one of beloved daughters probably thinks this is a great goa,l but I hope she’ll be disappointed.

Pricing
When visiting houses on broker open house tours I’m often struck by the disparity between asking price and reality. I’m usually tempted to blame the seller for this ridiculous situation but, on reflection, I suspect we agents share some of the fault. In short, we tend to fall in love with our listings. Any good agent will elicit from their client the strong points of a house; the features that made them buy it in the first place. We listen, we’re convinced, and then price the place based on our belief in the unique qualities of the place. The trouble is, buyers and objective agents often fail to appreciate those features; they come in, compare the generic features to other houses in the same price range and make a decision accordingly. While this phenomenon may make the case for creative marketing, I suspect that the real lesson to be drawn is that, ultimately, houses are houses, and we should price them based on location, condition and what’s for sale in the same price range. A spouse or a child has a unique value: a house, alas, does not.

The Market
I’ll have real statistics in a few weeks but, anecdotally, we seem to be repeating last year’s pattern which, as Nancy Healy of Shore & Country recently reminded me, saw a complete drop-off of customers from July through October and then a surge of buyers in November and December. That’s certainly happening to me – if it really is the new pattern, I’m going to start booking fall flyfishing / hunting trips to Wyoming for the early fall and return in time to take advantage of this late season buying. In the meantime, if you’re selling, you should be experiencing a marked increase in showings and offers. If not, I suggest that you review your asking price – you’re not where you should be.

There’s nothing wrong with this market that the right price can’t fix, especially in the high range. I’m wrapping up a deal for a house that started, foolishly, near $11,000,000; once it dropped substantially and to where it originally belonged, five buyers chased it. The money’s there, but the people who earned that money aren’t in the mood to toss it away. Offer value, and they will come.

Which brings us to …There are a lot of new houses being constructed with asking prices of $9,000,000 and above. My suspicion that they won’t sell at that level has been reinforced by seeing a number of recent sales in the $7’s of slightly older homes and new construction like that on Thunder Mountain. A $10,000,000 house may seem attractive, but when you can get comparable quality in an albeit dated house for $3,000,000 less, is there any question which to buy? I note that Antares, has dropped the asking price of one its Cherry Blossom Road houses from $12,000,000 to $7,500,000. I have my issues with Antares but I do admire folks who can read the handwriting on the wall. I wonder what the neighbor who paid Antares $10,300,000 for essentially the same house just two months ago feels about all this.

Holiday reading
One of my all time favorite historical fiction reads is “The Pillars of the Earth” by Ken Follett – yes, that guy – author of “Eye of the Needle” and all those other suspense stories. “Pillars” was completely different from those, and told the story of the building of an English cathedral in 1100 AD. Twenty years later, Follett has revisited that scene and gone forward two hundred years. I suppose you might profit from reading “Pillars” before this latest, “World Without End”, but the latter stands entirely on its own. It’s as absorbing as the first and just a terrific read. My pal Nancy (ok, to all those readers who know us and question my reference to her thus, how would you describe a former spouse who remains your best friend and champion?) gave me an early copy and, although I’m barely 150 pages into its 1000 page bulk, I’m loving it and, if you indulge in this sort of well researched, fetching fiction, you will too. Highly recommended.

Randall M. Keleher!
Regular readers of this column know that it exists primarily to tout the achievements of my little brother Gideon (Cleveland, Duble & Arnold, 869-0866) of whom I am proud. But, in mentioning Gideon’s latest coup of unloading $25,000,000 of Riverside waterfront, I neglected to mention Randy Keleher’s own success in that area earlier this fall, an $18,000,000 sale of 531 Indian Field Road in Mead Point. Randy’s a quiet sort of guy, so that was an achievement I only discovered by prowling through the latest quarterly sales book. Randy, as many of you know, ran Gordon’s Sports for years before joining Shore & Country and, while he can’t approach me in good looks or talent, he’s a terrific guy. Congratulations, friend.

Town Government
Congratulations are also due to Peter Tesi for winning the First Selectman’s contest in a landslide. I’ll confess that I voted for his challenger, Frank Farriker and split my vote by adding in Peter Crumbine so, if you look at the results, you’ll know my perspicacity in these things. Regardless, I think the town remains in good hands (though I’ll miss Jim Lash) and Mr. Farriker is still on the Planning and Zoning Committee from which, judging from a conversation with the man, we might expect some useful reform of the Floor Area Ratio rules: at the very least, Mr. Farriker is aware of the problems occasioned by the current set of rules.

Alphabetical Voting
A young (compared to me) Riverside resident, Randall Smith, squeaked by with just six votes to win a place on District Five’s RTM slate. I blame this close result on his last name – the RTM ballot is arranged in alphabetical order and a newcomer with a last name beginning after the nineteenth name is at a huge disadvantage because voters tend to just check off along the line until they reach the limit. And that’s a shame. It seems to me that the RTM is best served by a combination of old guard types (like Bobbi Hopkins, for instance), who know the town’s traditions and practices, and young parents with more current concerns. My last child graduated from the high school two years ago – I’m totally out of touch with that scene whereas parents like Mr. Smith know what’s going on with our schools. It’s true that William Buckley opined that he’d prefer to be governed by the first two hundred people in the Boston phone book than the Harvard faculty but surely we’d be better off with an RTM comprised of people of all letters of the alphabet, rather than a selection culled from the beginning of the alphabet.

Mortgage foreclosures
The main stream media and our government have a very short memory and have forgotten their campaign, waged over the past twenty years, to force banks to extend credit to poor folks who couldn’t afford conventional mortgages with a 20% down payment. Congress, under media pressure, banned “red lining”, which used to knock entire neighborhoods out of consideration for loans and, via regulation, pressed lenders to loosen their credit standards and let anyone who wanted to borrow money and buy a house. Well, by God, the banks did what they were asked and now we’re faced with a record wave of defaults. Why do you think the banks didn’t make these loans in the first place? Congress is now busy enacting new laws whereby taxpayers will make good on loans that should never have been made. But we’ve achieved fairness!

Local Waterfront
Ed Mortimer has listed Binney Lane for $17,000,000: I refuse to say that’s a crazy price. This year, every piece of waterfront has sold (including Layne Smalheiser’s, described in this column last week as unsold-went to contract a day later) and Ed’s listing has its own dock, a (small) beach and yardarm, as well as fantastic views of Long Island Sound and the Stamford light house. Coastal Area management regulations probably doom this house for replacement – add onto the kitchen, say, and you’re required to raise the entire house by a number of feet - but, with an acre of land in the R-12 zone, the mansion you’ve always wanted is waiting for you. A great spot of land on a quiet, private Old Greenwich street.

Appraisal Scandal?
Andrew Cumo, New York’s Attorney General, has alleged that appraisal firms jacked up the estimated value of houses they surveyed in order to please their lending banks. We’ll see how the evidence turns out; certainly, I have heard stories of such fraud, but usually as a collusion between the appraiser and a mortgage broker, not the lender itself. After all, it’s the lender who’s on the hook if a loan goes bad and there isn’t enough equity to protect it. In my experience, admittedly limited solely to Greenwich, appraisers have been scrupulously honest; I’ve sat with them as we went over comparable sales and I never witnessed them fudging figures; quite the contrary. So we’ll see.

Waterfront!
If there’s anything that’s pushed up the average sale price of Greenwich real estate this year it’s been waterfront property. With few exceptions (see below) anything that has saltwater as a backyard has sold, quickly, for astonishing prices. The latest sale was that of Tamar Lurie, who sold her own listing at 109 Byram Shore Road, asking $40,000,000, to her own client. That’s the kind of sale that would tempt most of us to take the year off but Tamar, no doubt, is still in the trenches as of this writing. From a buyer’s perspective, I’m astonished that anyone could be convinced to pay $40,000,000 for property that sold for $17,000,000 two years ago but I suppose, when bonus money’s burning a hole in your pocket, you buy what you want, when you want it. Sooee. This sale, by the way, is yet another example of Byram Shore Road’s command of the highest prices in Greenwich. Counterintuitive, but true.

More waterfront
Layne Smalheiser’s listing at 50 Carriglea Drive in Riverside remains unsold at $5,850,000 (there was a deal that fell through for reasons unrelated to the merits of the property). I really like this place. There’s a perfectly nice contemporary on the property but the land’s highest and best use is probably a new house, sited to take advantage of the great views across Cos Cob Harbor and down Long Island Sound. A dock permit has been obtained and Carriglea is a nice, dead-end street that should easily support a land purchase in this range, I think. Go buy it.

Over-priced houses
I mention these almost every week because I remain surprised at the stubbornness of some sellers. The market is pretty soft, so good pricing is even more important than usual, yet a ton of houses are out there at asking prices at least 50% higher than they’re worth (in my opinion, of course – the owners beg to differ). A $9,000,000 house that’s actually worth, say, $6,000,000 will attract no bids. It’s a useless exercise to bid on such a property, something like Mark Twain’s line about teaching pigs to sing: you waste your time and it annoys the pig (Twain scholars, feel free to correct me on this attribution – the sentiment is accurate, though).

And of course, there are some bargains
One reason Tamar Lurie’s still working is that she has a new listing at 11 Vineyard Lane that she’s priced at $10,975,000. I’ll confess that when this house was listed with another broker, at a far higher price, I wasn’t impressed but now, all things being relative, it’s a great deal. Five acres of wonderful yard, with pool and tennis court, and a completely renovated Georgian Colonial originally built in 1930. I obviously can’t speak for the owner, who I don’t know, but, to my eye, more money went into this project than is coming out. Certainly you couldn’t take a comparable house and renovate it to this standard for anything close to this price. Write that check, move in tomorrow; not a bad deal.
Pet Deposits
No, not the kind you place in plastic bags. Our state board has just reminded us that, by law, security deposits for rentals are limited to two months, maximum – no extra deposits for pet damage allowed. Good intention, bad result, as fewer landlords will accept tenants with pets.

Politics (real estate readers avert your eyes)
Teddy Kennedy has announced that he opposes the current nominee for U.S. Attorney General because that individual refuses to denounce “water-boarding”, or simulated drowning. Mary Jo Kopechne was unavailable for comment.

More Banking Scams
I know of two people who, having refinanced their homes, immediately began receiving a flood of junk mail from their new lenders. In both instances, buried in the tossed-away promotional material, was a demand that the lender be named as a beneficiary on the existing insurance policy. When this was ignored, the lenders proceeded to find their own insurance; in one case, at a cost of $6,800. The primary policy, which cost $1,200, would, and did name the secondary lender for free. In both instances the lenders backed off when confronted and cancelled the charges but I wonder how many loans out there have had ridiculous insurance fees tacked on to the original balance and who’s profiting from this. If our Attorney General can quit his habit of suing tobacco companies, perhaps he’ll look into this. Until then, check all junk mail you receive from your mortgage company and look at your loan balance every now and then. What you see may surprise you.

Market conditions
Contracts were down 22% in September 2007 compared to the year before, which would explain why my phone hasn’t been ringing. There are still buyers out there, of course, but mostly in the high end where mortgage scares don’t operate. I understand the fear that, if one buys now, prices may be still lower come next spring but consider that, if you have an existing house to sell that will help finance the next purchase, that price may be lower, too. While there are still too many over-priced listings out there I am seeing a number of bargains, so you might want to reacquaint yourself with your Realtor and go shopping.

Pricing
A house in northeastern Greenwich came on the market last January for $2,195,000 which, in my opinion, was not totally crazy, even if I’d have preferred to see it just under $2,000,000. It didn’t sell until last week when, several agents and many moths later, it dropped to $1,795,000. Try a high price, if you must, but if no one bites, change your mind.

Further proof of the fallacy of over-pricing, if required, can be seen in the mid-country where a house priced at $5,500,000 in January ’06 has just been reduced to $3,500,000 this week. Mind you, that’s just the new asking price and the house remains unsold. In another section of town, a house priced at $2,750,000 in May of ’06 finally dropped its price to $2,295,000 and has gone to contract, presumably at something less than its last asking price. Again: keeping a house in showing condition is a miserable thing to do and you’re suffering needlessly if you refuse to conform your asking price to the market. We’re not seeing a collapse of housing values but if you think we’re returning to 2005 price levels, I’d agree.


Fall it is acomin’ in
In the spring, the flocks of mallards on my creek split into pairs, the better to make young ducklings (check with the middle school kids in Portland, Maine’s sex education classes if you need further information). Come fall, they reunite. We’re back to flocks now and, while striped bass are still feasting on baitfish, the stripers will soon be gone and we’ll be left with only the company of our mallards. Works for me.

Who said the market’s dead?
For most of this year I was, or so I’ve been informed, ahead of my younger brother Gideon in sales. This is as it should be, notwithstanding that he’s been peddling real estate for the past twenty years compared to my mere five. Gideon just blew me out of the water when he negotiated a contract for Lowther Point in Riverside for $20+ million (Gideon, as is appropriate, is close-mouthed as to the identity of the buyer or the agreed upon price). We all want our siblings to do well, of course, but beat us? Ha! If you feel the same way toward your own kid brother, and have $20,000,000 (heck, $10,000,00 will do) to spend on real estate, call me before December 31st.

Cops
I’ve used this column to poke fun at our town’s police force before, but I’m distressed to see that two of our officers have felt it necessary to sue Greenwich to get relief they feel they’re entitled to. Patrolman Sean O’Donnell, who honored my son John and I by sharing coffee with us upon Mr. O’Donnell’s first return from Iraq, has now been redeployed there and claims that he’s been denied promotions otherwise due him because of his absence while serving our country. Lt. Jim Pucci, retired, has sued to recover health benefits he says were promised him after he lost his leg in a horrible service-related accident on I-95. I’ve only met Mr. Pucci once but, when my daughter Kate, at age 3, was in Greenwich Hospital’s ICU recovery unit, she shared that room with the recovering, unconscious Lieutenant and we met the entire Pucci clan. Notwithstanding their relative’s grave condition, the Puccis reached out to Nancy, Kate and me and forever endeared themselves to us. Kate’s now a very healthy 22-year-old, and I’ll admit that I’m biased, but it strikes me that we owe people like Jim Pucci and Sean O’Donnell our best faith. I hope that Jim Lash, also someone I admire, can use his talents to cut through to the truth underlying these lawsuits and resolve them fairly.

Back to real estate
A relatively new house, and one that was never occupied, just sold in Riverside for $558 a sq. ft. Nothing unusual about that but, when it first came on the market two years ago, I noted in this column that its builder was asking $703 per square foot and I compared it to other new construction which was selling for prices in the mid fives. It’s not popular to price houses by the square foot in Greenwich, but I think it’s a viable approach and certainly, this one sat on the market for years before its owner dropped its price down to comparable construction. For another prediction, there’s a new house way out in the Back Country that’s asking $980 a square foot. If my fellow Realtors are right, this one will trade, years from now, for just over half that. I notice that it’s already taken a $1,000,000 price reduction since its first open house; one of many to follow, I suspect.

How to sell your house?
A house that’s sat on the market unsold since January just increased its asking price by $95,000. Usually a dumb move but in this case the sellers have added a nice portico and bumped out the living room, making the exterior much more attractive. But I still question the strategy; they probably won’t recover their extra cost, but can they at least get the house sold, for higher price than if they’d just dropped the price another $100,000? I honestly don’t know, and I’ll be watching the results with keen interest. I’ll let you know the result here – stay tuned.

Advertising?
As a Honda owner, I may be more sensitive to this issue than other brand owners, but I was struck by an ad I heard on the radio for a “local” GM dealer (do you know that Greenwich has neither a Ford nor a Chevrolet dealership?), promising, “the deal you want today, the service you’ll need tomorrow”. I don’t want service tomorrow, nor do I expect to need any, other than an occasional oil change. This guy should change brands or switch ad agencies, in my opinion.

Foxtons folds
This discount brokerage, imported from England, has collapsed, firing its agents and filing for bankruptcy. It hired real estate agents, giving them a car and health benefits (incentive enough for me to be interested, certainly) but, according to comments on the web, Foxtons used them as telemarketers, calling “for sale by owner” sellers and trying to sign them up. No particular services were offered: the home seller paid extra to list the property on the MLS, extra if a commission was to be offered to a selling agent (and you can be sure we selling agents weren’t about to show a house that paid us nothing), advertising, etc. In fact, I never understood why anyone would pay these folks 3% for doing nothing when they could get an incredible range of services from real agents for just 2% more. We advertise the house, we show the house, pay selling agents half of that 5%, negotiate deals and hold your hand at all hours of the day, seven days a week. Seems cheap to me.

What’s with G Mail?
You know that it’s a slow real estate market when I have the space to complain about my email service, but my Gmail account, Google’s free email service, has apparently been hijacked by spammers. I now receive hundreds of messages a day in my junk mail account alerting me that my messages to any number of unknown persons have been rejected. Since I never sent a single one of those messages, it makes sense that some entity has captured my computer and is using it to send spam. But just try to find a human being at Google to report this security breach to. Gmail’s free: you get what you pay for.

And while we’re complaining
A long while back I noted that Greenwich’s radio station, WGCH, had abandoned all local content and had begun broadcasting canned business news originating out of Chicago, of all places. Now they are broadcasting Red Sox games which, as one of two Sox fans in this town, I appreciate, but could there be a more telling sign that this station has completely lost touch with its home base?

Real estate bargains
Yes, this column is really dedicated to real estate, and here are two listing descriptions to prove it. Shelly Tretter’s listing at 50 Richmond Hill Road has been reduced to $5,295,000 – I liked this place at its original price of $6,150,000 and it’s an absolute bargain now. Beautiful house with great architectural details, a great yard, plus pool, guest house etc. There’s nothing not to like about this house and I think it dwarfs its competition, which includes houses asking millions of dollars more.
But if the $5,000,000 market is a bit plebian for your taste, may I suggest Jenny Prottas’ ”Reservoir Farms” on Taconic Road? She’s co-listed it with Steve Archino for something like $19,000,000 and while I won’t vouch for that exact price, this is a wonderful property to use as a benchmark for all the $10,000,000, over-priced trash you’ve been looking at. Eleven acres, stables, riding rink, top-of-the-line house and so forth. If you are able and willing to spend an enormous amount of money for a house, this is the one to compare others against. Go see it.

Disconnect
The paragraph above notwithstanding, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a greater disparity between sellers’ expectations and marketplace values. It’s truly crazy out there: $6,000,000 houses asking $11,000,000, $950,000 values seeking $1,500,000 and so on, through all price ranges. It’s not that the market has collapsed but rather, sellers have wildly inflated ideas about their home’s value. Try going to your stockbroker and telling him, “ I need to get $95 a share for my GE stock – my kid’s starting college this year.” He’ll tell you that GE’s trading in the low $40s and that, regardless of your need, that’s the most you can get for it. And he’s right - why do you think that real estate is any different?

Taxes
Hillary Clinton is proposing at least one new give away a day and her ideas of how to finance her (your) largess ought to alarm you. No tax deduction on second homes (1/2 of Greenwich seems to be owned by New Yorkers using us as a weekend get-away) and a 4% surcharge on the “rich”: people earning $100,000 or more. Hang onto your wallet.

Ah, waterfront!
A house on Gilliam Lane in Riverside was just listed and is described as belonging to a “waterfront association”. Now I happen to have grown up in the house next door and while it’s true that a brook runs under the house in question, there’s a pedestrian easement down a driveway on Club Road to Cos Cob Harbor (a holdover from farming days when cattle were taken down there to munch on salt hay) and there is a brackish pond at the end of the street where Dorothy Hamill first learned to skate, I never considered any of these features to comprise a waterfront association. But who knows? If Al Gore’s right and the water level rises another 100 feet (it’s a long way down to that pond) maybe this listing will be accurate. Give it a hundred years.

And speaking of centuries
A house on Farwell Lane, in the Back Country, has now been marked down to $6,950,000, a long way from its original asking price of $12,650,000, many brokers and many years ago. It’s not an owner’s reluctance to drop his price that astonishes me but rather the fierce determination to resist such a drop for such a long time. Keeping a house in showing condition is a miserable experience. If the marketplace says that you (or your agent) have made a serious miscalculation on price, why not acknowledge that quickly and get on with life? This house sat unsold through one of the strongest real estate markets in history and is now chasing a falling one – bad move.

Oops!
299 Round Hill Road sold for $3.795 million way back in 2001. It was returned to the market in September 2005 for $5,700,000 and sold last week for $4,060,000 which, after commissions and conveyance taxes, must have yielded a nifty long-term capital loss. Does this say something about the 2001 market or today’s? Don’t know, but it’s not particularly encouraging, either way.

Watch out!
I walk my own clients through each and every paragraph of the standard Greenwich listing agreement, explaining what each term means. This leads to a longer meeting but eliminates any misunderstandings down the road, so it’s time well spent. Two other firms here in town, who shall remain nameless for now based on their promise to discontinue the practice, took another tack for years: they pre-printed a contract that departed from the standard listing agreement and, without alerting their clients, signed them up for what is in effect an automatic six month extension of the contract after its designated termination date. That would seem to be a direct violation of Conn. Gen. Statute Section 20-320 (6) (go Google it, if you wish) but the two firms’ principals deny it. Whatever, they say they’ve discontinued the practice. If that’s untrue, I promise that I’ll name them here. In the meantime, I suggest that you have your lawyer review any contract you’re signing if you have doubts about its provisions and obligations. All contracts are negotiable – just make certain that you know what you’re negotiating.

Oh, nuts!
Have you noticed the bumper crop of acorns this year? From what I can glean from the Internet, the phenomenon extends at least as far as Minneapolis but certainly here in Riverside the things are falling from every oak tree in record amounts. I don’t know why but if you’re raising pigs, now’s the time to release them into the neighborhood and let them feed on free mast.

Good Lord
Did you catch the story of the would-be physician, a Harvard student (naturally) who sued for, and received, extra time to take her medical boards because she’s breast-feeding her baby? This woman is already getting an extra day to take the exam to accommodate her dyslexia and ADD conditions, now this. Would you want someone like her treating you in an emergency? “Ah, sorry, I read your charts backwards and I’m nursing – come back tomorrow and let’s see if I remember you”.

Book Sighting
Perrott Library is now stocking copies of my book, “Greenwich Mean Time”. Just Books, for some reason, no longer carries it but you can buy your own copy at Amazon, an institution I shifted my allegiance to after my local bookstore shifted theirs.

Another one bites the dust
Rumors that the Antares project at Putnam Green was in deep trouble have swirled through the real estate community for months but publishing unsubstantiated rumors (as opposed to opinions that are just plain wrong) can cause nasty libel suits, so you didn't read them here. But now that the news has broken, I'll give my opinion that failure couldn't have happened to a more deserving entity. From the start, Antares has exhibited a brazen arrogance unusual even for Greenwich. As you may recall, Putnam Green and its sister development, Weaver Hill, were modestly- priced rental units on the western side of town. Antares bought them for $223,000,000 two years ago (at which time I did mention in this column that, when someone's eager to sell, you might want to ask why) and almost immediately set about evicting the tenants, many of whom had lived there for years. They set impossibly high "buy-in" prices and imposed a take-it-or-leave-it deadline that many tenants, if their letters to me were representative, found oppressive. So having antagonized the very people most likely to be interested in living in that side of town, Antares set about trying to peddle the units to strangers. Not many bit and now the financing's been yanked, workers pulled off the site and all sales cancelled. This is the same group that "accidentally" destroyed wetlands off of Langhorne Lane while building a cluster of high end houses and I suspect that neighbors of that bit of vandalism will lose no more sleep over the fate of this company than will the displaced tenants of Putnam Green. In my opinion, of course.

Is there any encouraging real estate news?
Not on the national level, that's for sure, but I wouldn't panic here in Greenwich, yet. Some houses are selling: sixteen went to contract in the past two weeks, at (asking) prices ranging from $8.5 million (waterfront land) to $760,000, so some buyers are out there. On the other hand, 106 new listings came on, which is normal for this time of year but we'd obviously like to see a better balance between those figures. I've laughed at buyers over the years who insist that they'll wait until prices come down and end up paying more, or never buying in town. For the first time in a long time, I'm not laughing; they just might be right.

But, just to prove I'm often wrong
A new listing on Lake Avenue came on last week priced at $6,200,000. Nice location set far back from the road and wonderful grounds but the house was built in 1965 and, to my eye, looked dated. I figured it would sit six months on the market before its price more accurately reflected my opinion – ha! Gone in just a few days via Ellen Mosher. It's hard, sometimes, to screen out personal opinions from objective judgment. In this instance, I knew the taste of my clients looking in that price range, knew they wouldn't like it and, since I didn't have any other buyers for the property, mentally discounted its price accordingly. That's a dumb way to price real estate and I try hard not to do it; sometimes I fail.

Making lemonade
The National Association of Realtors is running an ad proclaiming that it's a buyers' market because "there's more choice than ever". Uh, yeah – that might also be what we refer to as a glut of inventory, but whatever.

Making lemons
A bunch of us agents traveled to the far reaches of Greenwich's northern border to see a new house that was priced at, for that area, a pretty startling sum. No a bad house but nothing special, no "wow" factor so, considering that and its location, several of us independently concluded that the ultimate selling price would be half of what the builder is asking. We could be wrong – see above - but that's a pretty large discrepancy between what we see as reality and what the builder is dreaming. At least if we're wrong it will only cost us a foregone sale. If the builder has mis-guessed his project's drawing power, he'd better hope he has a more understanding lender than Antares did.

I’ve said this before
But perhaps you’d like to hear it again, this time from a real estate professor at Columbia, quoted in the New York Times. Professor Christopher Meyer, who studied loss aversion by (would-be) sellers in Boston when the market dropped 30% noticed that sellers refused to drop their price to match market conditions. They didn’t do well, naturally, and the professor says that he now counsels his own family, “If you want to sell your house then you list it at the market price and you sell it,” he said. “If you don’t really want to sell then don’t put it on the market. But don’t say you want to sell and then set the price so high that you spend the year cleaning up every morning, having people walk through your living room and look in your medicine cabinets and reject you. That’s just painful — and expensive.”
I’ve been saying this for the five years I’ve written this column but I don’t teach at Columbia – if you won’t listen to me, perhaps you’ll listen to Professor Meyer.

On the other hand
There’s still an active market here for houses priced right. B.K. Bates listed 144 Riverside Avenue, a wonderful 1860 Federalist on 1.4 acres, for $3.7 million last Thursday and it was gone in a bidding war by Friday. This house, one of the few landmarks we have in Riverside needed, to put it gently, a good bit of work - I’d estimate $1 million, minimum – to bring it into the 21st Century, but there’s nothing like it around here, and certainly no comparable land. I think that we’ve reached a new stage in land sales here in eastern Greenwich, where sellers can now get a premium for over-sized lots. If you own an acre or more in Old Greenwich or Riverside, you may want to eschew sub-dividing it and instead offer it as a whole. Or hold onto it, and pay those college tuitions down the road. Or, better yet, call me!

Hurricane deductibles
Interesting article, again in the New York Times, concerning the increasing use of “standard” deductibles of 2% or 3% in home insurance policies for storm damage. As the article points out, many homeowners gloss over this amount, thinking it doesn’t amount to much, but a $1,000,000 loss could mean a $30,000 out-of-pocket expense. Not the end of the world for you hedge fund folks, assuming your bonus comes through this year, but for older people on fixed income living near the water, that’s a chunk of change. As always, it pays to review your policy and see what’s in there. If you can’t understand the language, that’s probably a bad sign.

Stone and clapboard multimillion houses
About three years ago I suggested that the shingle-style house was probably reaching a saturation point. No one who counts listened, and we’re still seeing new ones, some of which are selling. With that record of prognistication failure, here’s my latest prediction: there are too many houses being built, all alike, with stone facing in the middle and clapboard wings to either side. They look identical and, other than price, there’s very little to differentiate one from the other. And, if price is the only factor, won’t the cheaper ones sell faster than their more expensive sisters?

Even a blind squirrel finds the occasional acorn
(Thanks to my brother Gideon for that bit of wisdom). I rarely read New York Times editorials (and never agree with those I do) so I was astonished to read their editors denouncing the entire corn-to-ethanol project as the national boondoggle that it is. It consumes more energy than it produces, drives up the cost of food, encourages the destruction of farmland and, in short, profits no one but the farmers who grow corn and vote in the Iowa primary. If ethanol is to make economic sense, it will be because we import sugarcane ethanol from Brazil but of course, we’re presently taxing it 50 cents per gallon and adding a 50 cent subsidy to American-grown corn ethanol – duh. It’s discouraging, putting it mildly, that a program so flawed that even the New York Times editorial board can see its disadvantages is praised by every politician, of both national parties, running for president. Just wait till they fix medical care and Social Security.

Where are the offers?

Most sellers with overpriced houses don’t understand why no one extends an offer, at any price on their property. Having spent many weeks recently with a very nice couple who are ready to buy but haven’t extended an offer on anything we’ve seen, here’s my conclusion: unlike, say, corporate take-over targets, houses are personal. The same hard-bitten business man or business woman who’d think nothing of extracting the lowest possible price from another corporation’s shareholders seems to balk at tossing a lowball, but realistic price at the owners of a house. “Call me if they lower the price” is the almost universal response to these situations, even though I argue that the time to present an offer is before the price is lowered and more buyers flood in. I think buyers don’t want to insult people personally, so they won’t go there. Too bad, because we’ve been looking at a huge range of houses recently, ranging in price from $6,000,000 to over $12,000,000, and so many of them are asking literally millions of dollars more than they’re worth. My folks are ready to buy, but they aren’t going to over-pay. So your house sits.

More on overpricing

A builder client of mine just walked from a deal when the seller (actually, his agent) of a building lot told us that they already had an offer roughly $500,000 more we offered, far than it could possibly be worth. I told the agent to sign the deal up before the alleged buyer was recaptured and returned to the loony bin but we, at least weren’t interested. Was there such a buyer? I suspect not, which makes this an even dumber tactic than it seems – nothing worse than making such a claim and then having to return, hat in hand, begging for the original offer but if there was, God bless both buyer and seller – they’ll need such blessings. Builders have to make money on a deal. While it’s true that both builder and land seller have conflicting interests as both want to maximize their profit, a successful transaction has to make sense for both parties or it’s never going to work. At the height of the market in 2005 sellers got away with some astonishing coups but the buyers ended up in a very poor position. A house off lower Lake Avenue, for instance, sold for an insane price in that year and the developer (doing his very first project, I’ll bet) dumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into its renovation. It sold last week for, after commissions, $25,000 less than he paid for it, not even including the money spent on improvements, carrying costs, conveyance taxes and so forth. In short, the buyer lost his shirt. There may still be innocent naifs out there, convinced that they can’t lose money on Greenwich real estate but the professionals I know have stayed in business for decades by refusing to overpay for projects. If you want to sell to them, adjust your expectations.

Merit pay for teachers?

The head of our local teachers’ union claims that it would be degrading for her members to have to compete for wages, to which I say, welcome to the real world, honey. I know of no other industry where three years of indifferent performance guarantees you life-long employment with pay raises each year based solely on your waking up to breath each day. I remember the (very few) excellent teachers I encountered in my passage through the Greenwich school system and they were of all ages; the very worst were usually old frauds, going through the motions, who should have been fired years before they were inflicted on me and my classmates.
And now, “magnet schools”

The committee to examine diversity in our grammar schools was headed by our Superintendent of Schools and supposedly included a number of parents for their feedback. From what I hear from those parents, they were never intended to have a voice and that the Superintendent simply held meetings without inviting their presence and then announcing a ‘consensus” that magnet schools were the solution, a pre-ordained conclusion. I still don’t get it: if better schools are the answer, why not improve all of them, rather than a select few? One way to do so might be to improve the quality of our teachers by, for instance, eliminating tenure and instituting merit pay.

Market Activity
August is usually a pretty slow month in the Greenwich real estate market and this year was no exception. Still, I was impressed how much activity there was. Forty-three houses went to contract during the month (compared to 41 in August ’06) ten of which at prices of $5,000,000 and up ($12,750,000 was tops, on Cedar Cliff Road in Riverside). That’s a substantial volume and you might find it reassuring to know that, even in this “national housing crisis”, there are still buyers out there and they’re doing more than just kicking tires.

“Green” houses
A number of my builder friends are either building or considering building “green” houses: super efficient, energy saving structures. They cost a bit more to build but produce a draft-free, comfortable house and offer much lower heating and cooling bills. The general sense the builders and I have is that consumers aren’t willing to pay more upfront even with the promise of paying less during ownership; my friend and builder, Peter Thalheim, says he builds them out of personal pride and a commitment to the environment, which is pretty cool. But 26 Bramble Lane, a house I wrote about before because of its innovative, super-insulated construction, sold in August for $3,725,000 and, without meaning to offend the buyer by suggesting that they over-paid for the house – they didn’t – I think that price may reflect a slight premium for its energy saving features. I hope so, because that will encourage builders to do more of these projects and buyers will end up with better houses. I am one of those “global warming deniers” and consider Al Gore and his ilk to be leading a new religious campaign based on fear and ignorance, rather than science, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t conserve resources – my father singly-handedly kept the 15 watt light bulb industry alive and raised his kids to abhor waste. I learned well, and I’d like to see more new construction pay attention to conservation.

White Houses
As one of the last subscribers to the printed book version of our MLS, I like to get my money’s worth by prowling through the whole thing, cover to cover. Did that recently, as was struck by the number of listing photographs that showed bucolic snowy scenes, reminiscent of Pieter Bruegel. Nothing screams “over-priced loser going nowhere” than a photograph, in September, of a bedraggled yard with a melting Frosty the Snowman in front. Any competent agent has a digital camera or can borrow one. If your listing is still depicting the snows of yesteryear, demand a new photo. Or, of course, you can wait a few months and you’ll be seasonally correct once again – but maybe you’d like to sell your house before February.

Chubby Wubbies
I’m delighted to have moved to Raveis’s Old Greenwich office because I’m now back in my “hood’ and get to encounter friends and neighbors regularly. The location also affords an opportunity to survey the street scene, and I’ve seen some amusing sights, including a porcine 4 year old, clutching both a bagel (with cream cheese, presumably) and a soda while being wheeled through town in a stroller. Far be it from me to offer parenting advice but this kid looked (a) old enough to walk on his own and (b) desperately in need of a little exercise. Just one man’s opinion, of course.

Don’t stage that house!
Saw some new construction the other day. The builder, seeking to recoup the expense of renting furniture for another, larger project, crammed everything into this much smaller house, thereby ensuring that prospective buyers will see exactly how tiny the living room, dining room and kitchen are. Bad move.

Speaking of melting snowmen
The new ethic, at least as preached by Leonard Decapprio and his new movie, “The 11th Hour”, is that we should all use less wood and curtail logging. Dr. Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace and presumably no enemy of the earth, points out that trees suck up carbon better than anything else on earth and that carbon remains stored in the wood, even as it’s converted to furniture and houses. Young trees absorb carbon at far greater rates than mature ones so we should be doing more logging, not less. And shooting more methane-belching moose, of course.

Mortgage Meltdown

The so-called sub-prime mortgage market has been taking a beating and dragging down a number of very good companies. But I'm not convinced that recent "solutions" proposed by politicians will do anything to alleviate the situation; in fact, I believe they will only make things worse. One suggestion floating around is to ban variable interest rate loans. That's not going to help anyone who already has one and it ignores recent history, when rates went down, not up. Variable rates were a good deal for a long time, now they aren't. Such is life. The late Harvard libertarian philosopher Robert Nozick, author of "Anarchy, State and Utopia" liked to commend "acts of capitalism between consenting adults" and that's what variable rate loans were; they allowed folks to buy houses who otherwise couldn't. Same with the "no-documentation" loans. I recall when, 20 years back, we wanted to add onto our house to accommodate the arrival of our third child. While my income as a lowly lawyer didn't meet the precise standards of a conventional 30-year mortgage, I was confident I could handle the payments and Green Point Mortgage, looking at a requested $100,000 loan on a $1,000,000 property, took the chance. We got the house rebuilt, Green Pont got repaid and everyone was happy. But last week, Green Point was shut down, not because its loans were going bad but because the panic infecting Wall Street spread to it.

I suppose that my point here is that flexible terms and rates – even interest-only loans - weren't and aren't all bad. I'm reading now about poor homeowners who swear that they didn't know their rates could go up and about mortgage brokers playing fast and loose with income statements but all in all, I think it would be a mistake to switch the whole system back to the standard 20% down, 30 year mortgage model. It will only deprive a lot of people the opportunity to own their own house. And if some of those people dive in over their head and lose what they tried to buy? Well, that's a shame, but depriving the 80-90% of their peers who can handle it the chance to buy a house seems like overkill.

Mortgage Contingencies
They're back! Not so long ago, sellers were refusing to allow mortgage contingencies into their contracts and buyers were forced to go without this protection. The shoe's on the other foot now and buyers who need a mortgage (not every Greenwich resident does, naturally) can usually insist that their deposit be returned if they can't obtain financing. But be warned: the days of overnight mortgage approvals are over, at least for now, because there are fewer lenders making loans and those that are are insisting on far more documentation than before. Two weeks is probably the minimum contingency date you should ask for and if you can get the seller to agree to three weeks, all the better. Sellers, cheer up: these things all go in cycles, and you'll be back in the catbird seat, one of these days.

Yet another apples to apples comparison
16 Stanwich Lane listed at $2,250,000 back in November of 2005 sold that month in a bidding war for $2,466,000. It was returned to the market this year and my brother Gideon (Cleveland, Duble & Arnold), representing the new buyer, got it for $2,350,000 last week. On average, Greenwich prices are holding firm but, as I pointed out last week, we're seeing more of these losing propositions. As always, the advice is to hope that you don't buy in a heated market and have to sell in a soft one. No one's ever done badly in Greenwich real estate in the long run but if you can't hold out for the long run, hang onto your wallet and cry.

Nice while it lasted
Schools are back open, traffic's back. But that means the buyers are, too, I hope. Next year, I think I'll spend August in Montana.

Dog Days
Contrary to rumor, Leona Helmsly's last will and testament did not demand that her little dog, Trouble, be sent off to be trained by Michael Vick. Amazing the mean things people say about the dead

The sky is lowering, not falling

There are a lot of buyers out there who think that, if they only wait long enough, Greenwich housing prices will fall to affordable levels. So far as I know, these people have been waiting since, oh, maybe 1935. But it is true that waiting for a particular house to drop can be an effective strategy. One Ashton Drive came on the market 1/23/04 for $7.5 million and sold last week 3 ½ years later, for $5.125. One Indian Spring, the great old Rockefeller estate, was listed for $26,000,000 on 5/17/05 and also sold last week (via Barbara Zaccagnini) for $13,410,000. Now that's a price reduction. I don't mean to embarrass the sellers of these two houses but write this to make the point that, if you and your agent both think a house is over-priced, other agents may, too, and the house will linger, offering you plenty of time to work down the price. But beware: I've known buyers who rejected their agent's opinion that a house was priced fairly and then lost the house they wanted to someone else. So listen to your agent; if you don't trust her advice, get another agent – there are tons of us out here.

"Yacht" Club leases
Certain RTM members have complained that Greenwich leases waterfront property to four non-profit clubs, including the Old Greenwich Yacht Club and the Mianus River Boat Club. I think they're wrong to complain. As I understand the situation, these are not private clubs: any town resident can join. Dues are paid, the buildings are maintained at no cost to the town and any "earnings" (a term mistakenly employed by Budget Overview Committee head Don Conway) are plowed back into operations. No one's getting rich here, and the town itself collects all the revenue from slip and boat rack rentals. Even Mr. Conway admits the value of these clubs saying, "it'd great for kids who folks can't afford to join private clubs" but he misses the point: there are a lot of residents who, while passionate about boating, wouldn't join a private club at gunpoint. These four organizations provide a terrific, low-cost opportunity for Greenwich boaters to enjoy the water without enduring ten year waiting lists and the annual Commodore's Ball. Leave 'em alone, says I. As an aside, if the RTM wants to look at boat fees, perhaps it should eliminate the charge on windsurfers which are brought to the beach and depart the same day with their sailors. What services are provided by Greenwich that justify charging any fee at all?

Energy for Connecticut
Connecticut Attorney General and Greenwich resident Richard Blumenthal exulted over last week's judicial ruling stopping, at least for now, a cross-sound natural gas pipeline, "thus preventing an ecological disaster". Turns out, some clams were going to be temporarily displaced. I like clams, especially fried, but I also like having enough energy in this region to keep the economy going. I recently heard Blumenthal defend his opposition to the liquefied natural gas plant, which would sit six miles offshore, by claiming that there were other, safer ways to import energy, "like pipelines". But if he and his environmental friends won't permit pipelines to be built, or LNG complexes, or high voltage power lines, or nuclear reactors or conventional power plants - and they won't - how do they expect to supply the region with our future energy needs? The best I can determine, this advocacy group's solution is low energy lightbulbs and enforced use of scooters for commuting. If it weren't so serious, the lunacy of these people, including Mr. Blumenthal, would be pretty funny.



Save this Date

The Women's Club of Greenwich is sponsoring a cruise around the Statue of Liberty and New York Harbor on Thursday, September 20. Hors d'oeuvres, buffet dinner, taxes and gratuities included, all for $95, regardless of club membership. Why am I mentioning this in a real estate column? Well, the head of the Club is my adored former Third Grade teacher, Maria Krumeich and she asked me to. I would never deny a (great) former teacher anything. Besides, thanks to the generosity of Riverside's own Tom Peterson, I did something similar once on Malcolm Forbe's Highlander and it was a blast. Questions? Call Carla at the Women's Club @ 869-2046.

The sky is lowering, not falling
There are a lot of buyers out there who think that, if they only wait long enough, Greenwich housing prices will fall to affordable levels. So far as I know, these people have been waiting since, oh, maybe 1935. But it is true that waiting for a particular house to drop can be an effective strategy. One Ashton Drive came on the market 1/23/04 for $7.5 million and sold last week 3 ½ years later, for $5.125. One Indian Spring, the great old Rockefeller estate, was listed for $26,000,000 on 5/17/05 and also sold last week (via Barbara Zaccagnini) for $13,410,000. Now that’s a price reduction. I don’t mean to embarrass the sellers of these two houses but write this to make the point that, if you and your agent both think a house is over-priced, other agents may, too, and the house will linger, offering you plenty of time to work down the price. But beware: I’ve known buyers who rejected their agent’s opinion that a house was priced fairly and then lost the house they wanted to someone else. So listen to your agent; if you don’t trust her advice, get another agent – there are tons of us out here.

“Yacht” Club leases
Certain RTM members have complained that Greenwich leases waterfront property to four non-profit clubs, including the Old Greenwich Yacht Club and the Mianus River Boat Club. I think they’re wrong to complain. As I understand the situation, these are not private clubs: any town resident can join. Dues are paid, the buildings are maintained at no cost to the town and any “earnings” (a term mistakenly employed by Budget Overview Committee head Don Conway) are plowed back into operations. No one’s getting rich here, and the town itself collects all the revenue from slip and boat rack rentals. Even Mr. Conway admits the value of these clubs saying, “it’d great for kids who folks can’t afford to join private clubs” but he misses the point: there are a lot of residents who, while passionate about boating, wouldn’t join a private club at gunpoint. These four organizations provide a terrific, low-cost opportunity for Greenwich boaters to enjoy the water without enduring ten year waiting lists and the annual Commodore’s Ball. Leave ‘em alone, says I. As an aside, if the RTM wants to look at boat fees, perhaps it should eliminate the charge on windsurfers which are brought to the beach and depart the same day with their sailors. What services are provided by Greenwich that justify charging any fee at all?

Energy for Connecticut
Connecticut Attorney General and Greenwich resident Richard Blumenthal exulted over last week’s judicial ruling stopping, at least for now, a cross-sound natural gas pipeline, “thus preventing an ecological disaster”. Turns out, some clams were going to be temporarily displaced. I like clams, especially fried, but I also like having enough energy in this region to keep the economy going. I recently heard Blumenthal defend his opposition to the liquefied natural gas plant, which would sit six miles offshore, by claiming that there were other, safer ways to import energy, “like pipelines”. But if he and his environmental friends won’t permit pipelines to be built, or LNG complexes, or high voltage power lines, or nuclear reactors or conventional power plants - and they won’t - how do they expect to supply the region with our future energy needs? The best I can determine, this advocacy group’s solution is low energy lightbulbs and enforced use of scooters for commuting. If it weren’t so serious, the lunacy of these people, including Mr. Blumenthal, would be pretty funny.

Save this Date
The Women’s Club of Greenwich is sponsoring a cruise around the Statue of Liberty and New York Harbor on Thursday, September 20. Hors d’oeuvres, buffet dinner, taxes and gratuities included, all for $95, regardless of club membership. Why am I mentioning this in a real estate column? Well, the head of the Club is my adored former Third Grade teacher, Maria Krumeich and she asked me to. I would never deny a (great) former teacher anything. Besides, thanks to the generosity of Riverside’s own Tom Peterson, I did something similar once on Malcolm Forbe’s Highlander and it was a blast. Questions? Call Carla at the Women’s Club @ 869-2046.

The sky is lowering, not falling
There are a lot of buyers out there who think that, if they only wait long enough, Greenwich housing prices will fall to affordable levels. So far as I know, these people have been waiting since, oh, maybe 1935. But it is true that waiting for a particular house to drop can be an effective strategy. One Ashton Drive came on the market 1/23/04 for $7.5 million and sold last week 3 ½ years later, for $5.125. One Indian Spring, the great old Rockefeller estate, was listed for $26,000,000 on 5/17/05 and also sold last week (via Barbara Zaccagnini) for $13,410,000. Now that’s a price reduction. I don’t mean to embarrass the sellers of these two houses but write this to make the point that, if you and your agent both think a house is over-priced, other agents may, too, and the house will linger, offering you plenty of time to work down the price. But beware: I’ve known buyers who rejected their agent’s opinion that a house was priced fairly and then lost the house they wanted to someone else. So listen to your agent; if you don’t trust her advice, get another agent – there are tons of us out here.

“Yacht” Club leases
Certain RTM members have complained that Greenwich leases waterfront property to four non-profit clubs, including the Old Greenwich Yacht Club and the Mianus River Boat Club. I think they’re wrong to complain. As I understand the situation, these are not private clubs: any town resident can join. Dues are paid, the buildings are maintained at no cost to the town and any “earnings” (a term mistakenly employed by Budget Overview Committee head Don Conway) are plowed back into operations. No one’s getting rich here, and the town itself collects all the revenue from slip and boat rack rentals. Even Mr. Conway admits the value of these clubs saying, “it’d great for kids who folks can’t afford to join private clubs” but he misses the point: there are a lot of residents who, while passionate about boating, wouldn’t join a private club at gunpoint. These four organizations provide a terrific, low-cost opportunity for Greenwich boaters to enjoy the water without enduring ten year waiting lists and the annual Commodore’s Ball. Leave ‘em alone, says I. As an aside, if the RTM wants to look at boat fees, perhaps it should eliminate the charge on windsurfers which are brought to the beach and depart the same day with their sailors. What services are provided by Greenwich that justify charging any fee at all?

Energy for Connecticut
Connecticut Attorney General and Greenwich resident Richard Blumenthal exulted over last week’s judicial ruling stopping, at least for now, a cross-sound natural gas pipeline, “thus preventing an ecological disaster”. Turns out, some clams were going to be temporarily displaced. I like clams, especially fried, but I also like having enough energy in this region to keep the economy going. I recently heard Blumenthal defend his opposition to the liquefied natural gas plant, which would sit six miles offshore, by claiming that there were other, safer ways to import energy, “like pipelines”. But if he and his environmental friends won’t permit pipelines to be built, or LNG complexes, or high voltage power lines, or nuclear reactors or conventional power plants - and they won’t - how do they expect to supply the region with our future energy needs? The best I can determine, this advocacy group’s solution is low energy lightbulbs and enforced use of scooters for commuting. If it weren’t so serious, the lunacy of these people, including Mr. Blumenthal, would be pretty funny.

Save this Date
The Women’s Club of Greenwich is sponsoring a cruise around the Statue of Liberty and New York Harbor on Thursday, September 20. Hors d’oeuvres, buffet dinner, taxes and gratuities included, all for $95, regardless of club membership. Why am I mentioning this in a real estate column? Well, the head of the Club is my adored former Third Grade teacher, Maria Krumeich and she asked me to. I would never deny a (great) former teacher anything. Besides, thanks to the generosity of Riverside’s own Tom Peterson, I did something similar once on Malcolm Forbe’s Highlander and it was a blast. Questions? Call Carla at the Women’s Club @ 869-2046.

The newest “Must-Have” fashion accessory
According to NPR, and who argues with NPR, fashionable families now count at least four children as necessary accessories, to go along with the yellow Labrador and the Mercedes. That many children, apparently, sends a message that you can afford four private school (and college) tuitions, a very large house and nannies to care for the brood. One young mommy interviewed for the article said, “I’m highly educated, ambitious and no longer employed in the workplace so of course I want to excel at something; in this case, raising the perfect family”. Let’s see: well educated, ambitious, rich young women – where do we find those? Instead of mulling over closing Parkway School, the Board of Ed should start planning new schools (I realize that all these perfect children are slated for private school but, as that young mommy may soon discover, not all perfect children are quite so perfect and some, alas, are going to end up rubbing shoulders with the great unwashed in the public schools).

The sky (isn’t) falling!
The New York Times reported over the weekend the sad story of a supposedly rich young thing from Wall Street who applied for a $1.5 million mortgage and was quoted rates as high as 13%. Leaving aside that a someone buying a piddling house under $2 million hardly qualifies as rich, in Greenwich, is it true that the pool for large mortgages is drying up? I called Marcos Zavattaro, Vice President of Patriot Bank and one of the most experienced mortgage guys I know (252-5922, if you want to talk to him yourself) to get the scoop. “One of the most ridiculous stories I’ve ever read”, was his response. According to Marcus, the so-called “jumbo mortgages” – loans over $1.0 million that can’t be sold to FannyMae, have indeed been hit by the recent credit panic, but not to the extent reported by the New York Times. Last Monday, he had a quote of 6 3/8 for one such loan; the next day, that same loan was 8%, because no one is willing to buy loans until they know what’s happening. Still, 8% is not 13%. Marcus’s advice – I think it’s his advice, but call him personally, in case I blew this - is to wait and let the panic subside over the next 60-90 days, when, he thinks, rates will retreat. If you want to buy a house before then, he suggests that you go interest only and pay the loan off when that bonus rolls in. If that bonus rolls in, of course. If not, we in the real estate industry stand ready to help you unload your unfortunate purchase at only a slight discount. Ah, just kidding – all my smart friends on Wall Street seem to have already figured out how to profit from the present scenario and if you haven’t, maybe you should be here with me on the other side of the trenches.

Change your broker, lose your buyers
I’ve been busy recently showing houses in the $5-$9 million range and rarely have I seen so many over-priced homes. I marked a number of them as ripe for realistic offers but saw this week that the owners of several of them have switched brokers and retained original price. That’s a sign of serious derangement – it’s not your agent’s fault that your house hasn’t sold, buddy, it’s your price – compared to others in your price range, you’re out of whack. So, when I see an owner refusing to acknowledge this truth, I cross the house off my list for future consideration. I’ll come back to it next spring when it will probably be in a free-fall and be a real bargain.

Pomerance Property
Did you see the interesting quote from Dianne Fox, our Town Planner, stating that there is nothing to prevent moderate income housing from being erected on the Pomerance park? I realize that many in town feel we need more moderate-income housing, but I suspect none of us who supported the town’s purchase of the parkland, for $20 million plus, did so with the intention that it be built over with housing. Bait and switch, or just another town official imposing her will over what the town wants? I don’t know, but it seems to me that we should fire our town planner and the current members of the RTM Land Use Committee. Time for a fresh start.

Old Greenwich bargain?
I think so, at least. Cathy Adams, of Country Living Associates, has listed a completely renovated four bedroom house at 54 Highview Avenue for $1,695,000. Highview is a deservedly popular street, within walking distance of Old Greenwich School and the village and a pretty easy walk/jog/ride to Tod’s Point. I think, comparing this house to what else is out there in its price range, this one’s the best by far (a comment that will surely solicit a dozen emails from other agents asking, “what about my listing?”, but what the heck).

Pool safety, continued
I never did hear back from my pool safety expert but from what I could learn there are a number of ways to address the suction pump peril (I’d think that a simple grill would do the job but apparently not). One device is a vacuum breaker that, installed, shuts down the pump when it senses a blockage. My advice, if you have young children or grandchildren, is to make an appointment with whoever services your pool and arrange for a thorough, careful safety inspection. And make the recommended changes.

Multiple Listing Service
I heard from a reader who pointed out that I often say it’s impossible to price a house too low in Greenwich because the marketplace will bid it to its proper price. So why, he asks, should he spend the money hiring a broker? He himself has sold three properties on his own and did just fine to which I say, good for you. But my point about the marketplace effect assumes, of course, that the property is fully exposed to every potential buyer and I know of no better mechanism to achieve that than the MLS. A “For Sale by Owner” sign stuck on the front yard won’t do it. Here’s an example: several years ago, an older acquaintance of mine decided to sell his waterfront property but shuddered at the thought of strangers wandering through his house. He approached a local agent and asked him to find a buyer. This was done, the house traded hands for somewhere around $4.0 million and both sides were happy. Those of us who heard about the sale thought the seller had left at least $1.5 million on the table and in fact it sold for more than twice the original selling price a few years later. That usually doesn’t happen when your house is on the MLS, although there are exceptions, especially when a house has been over-priced originally and then grown stale.

Besides, a source of objective advice and tactics can be invaluable. As a former NASD arbitrator I felt sorry for the poor deluded fools who came before our panels without benefit of counsel. Stock broker fraud and selling a house are different things, of course, in that, in the latter case, someone actually wants to give you (some) money while in the former Wall Street, having taken your money away, has a fierce determination to keep it. I’ve never strong-armed anyone into using my services as a lawyer or Realtor but if I had legal difficulties, I’d hire a lawyer and if I wanted to sell a house, I’d use the services of my fellow Realtors and the MLS. But feel free to ignore my advice; some folks succeed at the going-it-alone route and others have created an entire subspecialty in my business: turning FISBO’s (for sale by owner) into listings. If there weren’t a lot of failed FISBOs out there, that market niche wouldn’t exist.

Interest rates
Very much not an area I know much about (so perhaps I should start a hedge fund?) but I hear from my financial sources that there are an awful lot of people with bad credit in Connecticut and even here in Greenwich and the borrowing market has pretty much dried up for them. It’s killing deals and I assume that will create a ripple effect because, if someone with excellent credit can’t find a buyer for his existing house, he probably can’t afford to buy yours. Greenwich has always had a solid real estate base and I can’t imagine that collapsing but it’s not inconceivable that things may slow down, for awhile. It’s not quite the cop’s “nothing to see here, move along, move along”, but I wouldn’t panic. Yet.

Drop that price, now
I checked up on some numbers: in the second and third week of July 74 single family homes were placed on the market while only 31 moved off to contract. That’s not awfully astonishing, or alarming, because the holiday slowed momentum and besides, like forest fires out west, this happens every year. But a month from now, all sorts of new inventory will be coming on and your poor listing, tired and stale, will be buried amid the new ones. It’s your money, but if you’ve been resisting a price reduction, you might want to make one now and sell your house to some nice family that needs a house before school starts.

Old Greenwich traffic
Have you noticed the traffic buildup in Old Greenwich these days, especially between the hours of 11:30 am to 1:30 pm? Some days, the cars are bumper-to-bumper from Mackey’s Mobile to Binney Park. I suspect it’s a mixture of beach, lunch and ordinary business traffic and I have absolutely no solution to propose; we’re a one traffic light town down here, but it’s simply awful. I try to avoid coming into town during that period and, with due apologies to Tomac Road residents, just bypass the business district. Must be hard on merchants, though.

Trusty service
I mentioned Mackey’s, and I have always had a great relationship with, first, John Mackey himself and then later with Peter, his son in law and his associates Paul and Kenny. That said, I happened to bring my car into Soundview Service Center, across from the Post Office on Arcadia Road, for the cheapest gas in town and, while I was at it, a question about my air conditioning. My Honda’s four years old and on really hot days the A/C seemed to have lost its punch. I left it to be serviced and an hour later received the scariest words you can hear from a mechanic, or a cancer surgeon: “Mr. Fountain, could you come down here? I want to show you something.” Well, the “something” turned out to be nothing more (or nothing less?) serious than my own inability to set the A/C controls properly and, once they straightened out this moron, everything was fine. I mention all this because the proprietors could so easily have taken advantage of my ignorance and run all sorts of tests, added whatever has replaced Freon these days, etc. I thanked one of the owners, Pete Parente (it’s a family business with a bunch of adopted kids so whoever you meet there is probably a Parente) for his honesty and he said simply, “that’s not how we operate.” Indeed they don’t, so SoundviewService Center (637-2033) has now been added to my list of recommended service providers.

Swimming Pool Safety
Nancy and I came very close to losing our boy John, now a strapping 24-year-old, when he was three and playing in our friend’s lake. So the tragic death of six-year-old this past weekend in his parents’ pool struck an awful chord. I have many clients with small children who insist on a swimming pool and, while I suppose a sale’s a sale, I always point out the statistic in that great book, “Freakonomics” that a child is 100 times more likely to die in a family swimming pool than from a gun in the household. Deadline pressure prevents me from including advice from local pool safety experts (next week, I promise) but do be aware of the danger of pools. This from someone who raised three kids on a tidal creek without losing one of them (I think so – Nancy, is that right?)

630 Lake Avenue
A loyal reader has emailed, informing me that this property is going to auction in the near future. He asks why the Multiple Listing Service, touted by me as the best method of exposing a house to the market, so obviously failed. My answer is, … I dunno. I liked the house very much when it was first listed on the MLS and still liked it, a year later, when it reappeared with a new broker and a lower price. But it’s a quirky house and even the MLS can’t move a house when its price is wrong and, in this case, the market says the price is wrong. Minimum bid, according to my reader, is now $500,000. Now that would be a bargain.

Lowther Point
My friend and colleague here at Raveis, George Lowther, has had his waterfront property in Riverside listed for sale (at $25,000,000) for a long time, and I've been laughing at him for just as long. But I recently was back on the property and I confessed to George that I think the market may have caught up with him. This is a spectacular piece of property, with unparalleled views down the Sound to Manhattan, a deep water dock, high bluffs, four plus acres etc. etc. I don't think its equal exists in Greenwich and if not, then it may very well be worth every penny that George is asking. I know he's not budging from his price and, if my family had owned this land for 125 years, as George's has, I'd be just as stubborn. The present house is an 1880 charmer that may well be headed for the dustbin of history but it certainly be updated if desired. It's the land and its views that provide the real value here, however, and, based on recent sales of inferior waterfront, I wouldn't be surprised if, at long last, someone recognizes this parcel's uniqueness.

Internet mortgage loans
Buyers sometimes shun our suggestions about local mortgage brokers and insist on going online to find the cheapest rate. I've always thought that was a false economy because rates are pretty much equal all over; it's about service, not a $5 difference in monthly payments. When something goes wrong, the day before closing, it's awfully nice to have a local person on hand to straighten things out and, because so much of a local mortgage broker's business is steered to them by agents (we always recommend at least three, so don't get the wrong idea here) they have a real incentive to make things right – not so with someone you found on line. And now, I'm hearing about a new problem, involving online brokers lining up financing with banks that aren't licensed in Connecticut. This little flaw usually surfaces a day or two before the scheduled closing which makes things, …interesting. If you really fell it necessary to use an online service, check with the lender (not the broker, who is probably clueless) and make certain they can lend money in our fair state.

Stinky houses
We all get used to the particular odors of our homes and stop noticing anything unusual but some houses present quite an olfactory challenge to an agent and her clients when first encountered. Stale cigarette smoke is a real deal killer, as are cat pee and mildew. Your listing agent may not tell you for fear of hurting your feelings but try to get an honest opinion and, if there's a problem, address it, even if it involves ripping out carpets or curing the moisture problem. I know of one house with pet stain odors so bad that the floors had to be completely sanded down and refinished. It was worth it, though: the original odor was so bad I had to conduct the agent open house outdoors. Ugh.

But well priced houses are still selling
Ann Simpson, one of my favorite colleagues even if she does work with Prudential, listed 30 Dawn Harbor Lane for $3,295,000 in March. The house was decent enough but, no offense to the owners, nothing too special. So Ann, wise woman that she is, priced it a few hundred thousand dollars less than a somewhat comparable house down the street had recently sold for. Result? A bidding war, and a final selling price of $3,906,000. As I keep mentioning here, you can't under-price a house in this market, but you can certainly over-price it.

Savage Kindom
A great new book on the founding of Jamestown by Benjamin Wooley. Very entertaining. And because Old Greenwich was settled almost around the same time, its events and characters seem connected to us up here, hundreds of miles away. A terrific summer history read, if Harry Potter lets you down.

No truth to the rumor
Greenwich's best referee, Tom Mahoney, has not been indicted for throwing Greenwich Academy girls basketball games nor has he retired on his ill-gotten gains. Instead, the poor guy injured his Achilles' tendon, which demonstrates the foolishness of playing kids games as an adult.

Is the bloom off the rose?
In March 2005 my brother Gideon’s listing, asking price of $1,199,000, sold in a bidding war for $1,305,000. The builder/buyer tore it down and cleared the lot, then changed his mind and put it back on the market for $1,395,000. It finally sold last week for $1,215,000, or $90,000 than was originally paid. One transaction does not make a trend, of course, but I do notice builders getting more cautious with what they’ll pay.

Calling all hedge fund managers!
Joe Barberi has just listed an incredible old mansion on 77 acres of land for $39,000,000. Out of respect for their privacy, I never disclose sellers’ identities in this column, but it’s safe to assume that the owner is one of our town’s more noted celebrities. This place has everything, including a dungeon. Built in 1926, it was a bit shopworn when the current owner bought it in 1994. He’s brought it back to its original condition and wisely left it at that. The grounds are spectacular, with room, far away, for donkeys and even a flock of chickens but the best feature is the great hall which, with its soaring (40’) vaulted ceiling and stained glass windows gives real meaning to the term, “cathedral ceiling”. 17th Century English paneling abounds, as do fireplaces, including a walk-in fireplace in the great hall with a 6’ claymore sword hanging above the mantle (you’ve probably seen the sword before). The only scary thing about all this is that the listing information includes a copy of a four-lot subdivision plan. I’m a little short of funds this week so cannot personally save one of the last of the “Great Estates” but surely someone on Wall Street has a bit of spare change; I hope so, anyway.

New Construction
Not every teardown need be mourned, especially if the house is replaced by something far nicer. In my entirely subjective opinion, two new homes illustrate this: Mark Van Hoesen ‘s project at 27 Grove Street, in Cos Cob, and Mark O’Brien’s at 9 Binney Lane in Old Greenwich. 27 Grove is a great house on a quiet street in a close-knit, friendly neighborhood. It backs up to a town park, has five bedrooms, is very well built and is priced at $1,999,000 – I think it’s the best value in this price range that I’ve seen in a long time. Mark O’Brien also builds a great house and I think his new one on Binney is his best effort yet. A terrific limestone entrance opens to a five bedroom, airy house with what the trade refers to as “good flow”. Top quality construction, to this eye, with Mark’s usual quirky taste showing up in unexpected places: his choice of color for the onyx flooring in the mudroom, for instance, certainly caught my attention but I finally decided that I liked it. One of the things I admire about Mark is that he’s not afraid to depart from the plain vanilla, build it to sell philosophy that most builders have. I don’t mean to imply that this house is some kind of weird creation, it isn’t; it’s beautiful. The house he built next door sold last month in a bidding war and I wouldn’t be surprised if this one did, too. $4,900,000, asking.

John Bird, R.I.P.
I was sorry to see that my old principal, John Bird has died at 80. Mr. Bird was principal at Eastern when I was causing trouble there and moved to the High School just in time for me to continue to plague him. He was a kind, wise, teacher who even tolerated our shutting down the school during the Kent State protests in 1970 (I don’t remember the date but my pal Mike Horton does and sends me a reminder note each anniversary – May?). His assistant (and my House Master), Doug Mertz, told me in 1971, after he’d miraculously shepherded me to graduation, “Fountain, you’ve done what no other student could do: you’ve driven me out of education - I’m moving to Idaho to grow cherries on my father-in-law’s farm.” I always thought I did Mertz a favor but Mr. Bird was made of sterner stuff and stayed at the school long after I left. Those were turbulent times and I admired Mr. Bird for dealing with us rowdies in a firm but fair manner and allowing us to at least pretend to be intelligent young adults. Great guy.

Dog Days of Summer
With the Fourth falling on a Wednesday, not a heck of a lot went on last week by way of new listings or broker open houses. But I’m sure I wasn’t the only agent busy with clients looking at houses so if you’re a seller, don’t despair: there are plenty of interested buyers still out there and still in town.

Which reminds me
August is coming and will bring with it a great buyer’s opportunity. Everyone flees town (which is why I stay – it’s like Greenwich in the old days, quiet and uncrowded) and so if you hang around, you’ll find that there very few other buyers and agents prowling the very property you’re interested in. If you move quickly, before Labor Day, you can often grab a decent deal. But see the very next paragraph for the obligatory caveat.

You aren’t necessarily the only buyer
32 Meyer Place in Riverside priced in September at $1,995,000, eventually dropped to $1,795,000. But it recently sold for $1,807,500 in a bidding war. Two (or more) buyers showing up at the same time after a house has sat on the market for a long, long time is more common than many buyers think. It’s not a conspiracy, just a quirk of this business, so if you’re interested in a property and are told that someone else is, too, the listing agent (probably) isn’t lying. In short, if you want to make a bid, don’t assume that you have all the time in the world to do so.

Old Greenwich Sidewalk Sales this week
Not a big whoop for me but it affords the opportunity to comment on a simply awful traffic rule here down east: parking fines. The town permits you to park along those sidewalks for an hour, free. Signs say so. What those signs don’t mention is that the fine for over-staying your welcome is a whopping $55, far higher than the fine for staying too long in metered parking. If that high a fine is necessary to keep the streets clear for shoppers, okay, but where’s the deterrent value if it’s undisclosed? Parking in a handicapped space could cost you $75 and there’s a large notice informing you of that so most people don’t do it (I’m ignoring the moral issue here that you just shouldn’t take a space set aside for the lame). By not warning parkers how much it will cost to stay longer than an hour, the present setup serves only as a revenue gatherer and as a deterrent only to those who get stung. No, I didn’t just get a ticket, but I think the town’s being unfair.

More unfairness
I’m aware of a new house that, having been built exactly according to the plans submitted to and approved by the Building Department, was denied a certificate of occupancy because it’s roof was pitched too steeply, allowing possible use (gasp!) of its pull-down attic for storage. Why, that’s a violation of our floor area ratio rules! The builder had to weaken the rafters by cutting huge notches in each, then adding trusses to support the roof and then providing an engineer’s certificate attesting that the roof would collapse if the trusses came out. His before and will say it again but the purported purpose of our FAR rules is to preserve our streetscape and keep houses from appearing too large from the outside. This house remained exactly the same size after it was weakened – the only difference being that, with trusses added inside, the owner could no longer store things in his attic. I have used this column several times to ask the head of our RTM’s Land Use Committee for the rationale of this obsession with what people do inside their own homes and have received back a bit of angry outrage but no explanation. Maybe he should convene (another) public meeting: not to listen to our objections – that’s been tried, and we were ignored – but to explain why this rule exists. If, as I see it, there is no reason for it, it’s just policy, then perhaps the entire RTM will see the ridiculousness of the situation and tell the Land Use Committee to clean up their act.

Make way for ducklings
If only. Instead, Brunswick School has plowed under a beautiful playing field (and many huge, old trees) to accommodate a parking lot. It’s their property, and I’m sure Mahr Avenue residents will be glad to see their street cleared of parked cars but the project strikes me as an unfortunate allocation of resources. By the way, and this same observation can be made about Greenwich High School, with somewhat lesser accuracy, but do check out the students’ cars when school is next in session. The teachers drive beaters; the students seem to prefer Lexus SUVs, which seem to be about two years old, which I assume means they’re family cars coming off lease. The kids look so cool behind the wheels of these things, especially when they’re wearing their Che Gueverra T shirts and have gangsta rap pouring out the windows.

On the other hand
If my father had sprung for a Lexus and I had been able to attend Brunswick, I probably wouldn’t have placed Glendower and Hotspur in “The Tempest”, as I did in a recent column. Henry IV part I, of course, which I knew, at one point. Interesting lesson here: when writing the original column I Googled the lines and up came a very authoritative site attributing it to “The Tempest”. I ignored my own doubts in favor of the power of the Internet, which is obviously a dumb thing to do.

Whither diversity?
The Supreme Court’s recent 5-4 decision regarding school desegregation, bans, I think, considerations of race when assigning students to particular schools (I’m hedging here because I have not read the decision and the commentators are having a wonderful time trying to figure out what it all means). If so, what does that do to Greenwich’s efforts to move kids around town? Perhaps a continued expansion of the magnet schools which is okay, I suppose, but I’ve always wondered: if changing curricula or putting extra resources into a school makes it a “magnet”, why aren’t we doing that for all our schools, now?

Location is everything
Even for summer homes. My Realtor friends Marshall and Mary Ann Heaven recently bought “Sea Biscuit”, a six bedroom “cottage” in Kennebunkport, just down the street from The Colony and two blocks from the Bush family compound on Walker Point. Because of its siting, Sea Biscuit is ideally suited for President Putin to host a Russian-style dinner for his hosts so the Embassy rented the house for the weekend. As I write this, the Heavens are in The Colony while their house is filled with KGB and various security types, the refrigerators are sealed, filled with a planeload of Russian delicacies flown in from Moscow and an armoured stretch limousine is parked in the front yard. No sightings of Putin or Bush yet but Sunday night should be a memorable one. Beat that, Scott Frantz.

Oops
A house in central Greenwich just sold for $3.5 million, which struck me as a bit low for such a nice house on such a good road. But it came on the market two years ago asking $4.895 million and I think that just killed it. By the time a buyer finally showed up, the stench of a decaying listing badly affected its price. Do what you like; if you enjoy keeping your home in showing condition for two years and entertaining strangers at all hours of the day, seven days a week, then price your house at whatever you like and go at it. But the market will not reward you for your effort. My advice is, if you aren’t receiving offers, it’s time to dramatically downsize your expectations.

Lawyer’s revenge
The favorite legal case that I ever read involved a New York City landlord who refused to rent to a lawyer because, he reasoned, she’d end up suing him. She promptly proved him right (“you won’t rent to me!”) and a judge eventually ruled that lawyers were not a protected class and could thus be discriminated against. Made sense to me – As a real estate lawyer, I always cautioned my real estate clients to be wary of offers from lawyer/buyers especially, worst case, two married lawyers moving from the city – but I was saddened to learn from the New York Times this week that “occupation” has been added to the list of protected classes for housing discrimination cases in New York City. That category was referred to in the article as a “lawyer’s protection clause” and obviously my former colleagues, after failing to win in court, went off to the City Counsel and got what they wanted there. So far as I know, we can still discriminate against lawyers here in the Nutmeg state and, while some of my best friends are lawyers, if I were a renter or seller and a lawyer wanted my property, I’d be cautious.

Is the sky falling?
I think not, but I have noticed several houses that recently sold for less than was paid a few years ago. Average sale price is still climbing nicely, especially in Riverside and Old Greenwich, but seeing a $50,000 markdown from a three-year-old sales price does concentrate the mind a bit.

On the other hand
Maria Ruggerberg, of this office, had a listing a month or so ago on Owenoke in Riverside. She convinced her sellers to let her place it into the multi-list system (a lot of people just hate having tons of strangers wander through their house) and, just as important, priced it at $2.595 million, a tad below what you might otherwise reach for. Result? It came on the market on a Thursday, it received four full-price offers by Friday and on Monday the sellers’ lawyer had in hand a non-contingent contract for $2,743,000. The deal closed last week, showing that there’s nothing wrong with this market when the price is right and also, the power of exposing your house to the largest number of buyers possible. It didn’t hurt that the house was in great condition and showed beautifully.

Greenwich Schools
I was a bit taken aback recently when I learned that a friend’s kid had been dragooned into “translating” for two classmates who allegedly suffer from “selective mutism”. I’d never heard of such a disability and, struck by the odd coincidence that two unfortunate children in one small class should have the same affliction, I Googled the term.It’s the new PC term for what we called “shy”. Greenwich already has one of the highest percentage of “special ed” students in the country because sophisticated parents have figured out how to game the system and get their kids untimed SATs, tax-payer-provided tutors, and the like, but I wonder if any real good is going on here. I remember my first Moot Court experience, where, faced with arguing a hypothetical legal argument before six robed judges, my mouth dried up and my brain turned to mush. The solution turned out to be not relying on a brighter student to speak for me but to repeat the process a number of times until I could think and speak on my feet. At some point, every kid will have to do the same thing and I’d suggest that process start early.